Lettuce!

I WANTED to leave you with one for the weekend that would make you think.

I was at the 99¢ Only Store again today. As my late wife used to say, “You can’t keep him out of there!”

Christ almighty, how that used to piss me off when she’d say that. And to people we didn’t even know! The bank teller! She didn’t need to know my business. Or the ass who put the tinting on my car windows for $60 cash. (And then the next day I go through a red light, get pulled over, and the cop makes me peel the film off the front windshield right then and there or else pay a $300 fine. And three weeks later the rest of it started wrinkling and bubbling and coming off anyway. Sixty bucks shot to hell!)

But somehow she works into the conversation to Mr. Window Tinter, “You can’t keep this one out of the 99¢ Only store!” (He did the job in the parking lot when we were shopping inside.) Thank God he didn’t speak English so he didn’t understand. But if I ever find him I’m going to take sixty dollars out of his hide and he’ll understand that. I think he had a baseball cap and dark hair.

The point is, at the 99¢ Only store, they sell produce now, and today they were offering this:

And as you know, I’m a pretty introspective person – always thinking.

It occurred to me that this is a particularly odd brand name. And it makes you think.

Earthbound Farm.

To some, it would imply that most farms are just floating around unanchored to our planet, hovering just over the surface maybe, but this one is distinctive because it is in fact an earthbound farm; that is, it’s bound to the earth.

And others might interpret it this way: This company sells produce that they grow elsewhere in the galaxy, but it’s all being shipped here. Therefore in transit, it’s earthbound.

It makes you think, though, and every once in a while, that’s important.

You know what’s also important? Getting your feet checked regularly for Morton’s neuroma. My God, what I wouldn’t do to hear her say, just one more time, to some complete goddamn stranger, “The 99¢ Only store? Oh, you can’t keep him out of there!”